Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Trent Oster, Producer:

Balancing Game Classes: We are planning on a variety of systems to make NWN playable for all classes. The first system is the henchman system. Henchmen and animal companions or summoned monsters can really help out the weaker melee classes and can also fill out the skills of a melee strong character.

The encounter system handles balancing based on the toughness of the player and his/her companions, so fights can dynamically scale. The third is designing in multiple resolution paths to scenarios. A smart or charismatic character may be able to talk their way through an area. A stealthy character may be able to sneak past and the less than intelligent Half Orc fighter can smash his way through.

In short, our NWN campaign will play different depending on what character you play, thus ensuring a good balance and replayability.

Saving and Loading: NWN will allow full saving and loading when you are running the server (single player or multiplayer). So, you start up a single player game and you can save at any time. You can also start a multiplayer game and save at any time so your group can quit for the night and resume at a later date.

With regards to balancing the game, anytime a player goes to re-load the game we have to look at it and decide if we have made a design mistake. If the average player of the game is reloading all the time, we really need to re-work the balance of the game. In short, we think game loading is a real disruption of the gameplay experience and anything we can do to keep re-loading to a minimum will be done.

However, we still want some fights to be very challenging and we will have to work hard to ensure the correct balance.

Lan Network System: NWN is built from the ground up around our own networking layer system. In the past we have worked with other systems which had non-optimal performance. The NWN networking engine is much faster and more efficient and should give a better Lan playing experience.

Two-headed Weapons: Yes, we will have a few two headed weapons.

Acceleration in movement: Question: How is the acceleration towards maximum movement speed implemented ? It would be nice and balancing with a slight delay before you reach maximum speed. It's both realistic and takes away the annoying factor that a melee monster/person with slow running speed never can attack a faster moving archer. It's just a thought and can't be to hard to implement if it's not done already.

Done. The animation looked crappy without it. When people just popped to running it looked bad, so character now go from stand->walk->run and run->walk->stand. It looks much better

Contingency Spell: Contingency will not be in the initial relase of NWN. This single spell requires at least one custom Gui and a lot of custom coding, so we had no choice but to exclude it from our list of spells for the initial release.

Resting: You can flag an area as not allowing player to rest there. As to rest length, we are still going over the issues involved, so I can't really offer an answer.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Flashy Crits: Big critical hits? Oh my Toto- you bet!
Alex S. (Special Effects Artist) is very proud of his graphics for the big hits. The first time I saw them, (I was fighting a deranged citizen) I said "Alllright" just like Otto from the Simpsons.

Underwater: Conditions can scripted to be different for an 'underwater' section you might have. The specifics, of course, would depend on the organizer and the level of his scripting Kung-fu.
As a side note, Derek F. is very proud of the simulated underwater environment he created, as an experiment, with his liberal use of the colored fog effects (very dense, blue fog).

Point Buy: As I'm sure this will become a 19 page discussion on the Point buy idea, I'll get in here while it's still new. Trent O. mentioned, about a month ago, that 30 points will be going through the testing process to see if that is an acceptable level for creating characters. I can't say anymore than that because the testing continues. It might change with what we discover about game play as a result of that testing.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Supported Operating Systems: The currently planned supported OSs for the Windows version are 98/ME/2K/XP. This could change as will all things, but it should be about right.

Henchmen Limit: Those screens were multiplayer. Limit of 1 henchman per PC.

Banning Players: We will not be doing any banning of players ourselves because we are not running any servers. We will be providing the tools for server operators to do their own banning.

We will have the standard IP banning for server operators. We will also give the server op the ability to ban a player's CD Key from their server. This does not give the server op access to peoples CD Key as this ban is based on a public version of the Key.

There is nothing we can do about banning someone globally from the game as we do not have that kind of control in a distributed, non-BioWare server environment that we are using. Plus there is the issue of someone selling their copy of the game. Are they banned too?

Release Date: Amazon is making up that date. They do not know when it is coming out. Same for the Norwegian site.

Official Campaign: The Official Campaign is being designed so that you can finish the game no matter what your class or classes of character. It will not matter what class you are.

XBox: Hmmm, I can't believe that none of us posted in this thread. Two things:

1 - The XBox rocks.

2 - There are no plans to bring Neverwinter Nights to the XBox at this time.

Toolset: Actually, the Toolset uses the exact same graphics engine as the game. It is compiled right in. Its not a representation, its the same. This is also why we cannot Open Source the Toolset code to allow just anyone to port it.

David Gaider, Designer:

Creating Cities: There are some very cool things you can do to bring cities to life. The scripting language allows for much more control than we had in BG2. Take the following as ideas, if you like:

Since you are able to create waypoint objects and use these to have people walk a pre-determined route, you could very easily create such activity as:
- patrolling guards who actively watch out for thieves (or maybe just thieves who are actively mugging someone as below). Maybe they chat with each other if two guards come close, displaying dialogue that shows them complaining about stuff. Maybe once in a while they head off to the tavern.
- peasants that go from place to place...you could even make their route random. Say, during the day, they have a chance of going to the tavern, going to a church, etc etc. But at night they definately head home, and spawn in front of their doors first thing in the morning. Synchronize their movements with the scripts of interiors, and you could literally 'follow' someone inside of a building (their disappearance at the entrance corresponds with a spawn in the interior area).
- how about spawning in thieves at night who, if they come across peasants and no-one's around, try to mug them?
- when peasants come across each other in the street, have a chance of them stopping and chatting. You can have random dialogue or pre-determined conversations displaying over their heads.
- a priest preaching in the streets. Have him display fiery dialogue over his head. When peasants come within range, they stop and gawk for a while, drawing a crowd.
- have merchants who shout out at anyone (PC or NPC) who walks nearby.
- have beggars who wander randomly and approach anyone who comes within range, begging for money. If it's an NPC, you could make a check whether the NPC displays 'certainly, here you go' or 'off with you, beggar!'.
- have a group of children playing a game of tag and chasing each other around the streets. At a pre-set time, their mother spawns in front of her house and calls for them, and they all run home.

At any rate, these are only ideas...but I know for sure that they are all definitely do-able. There's been some great work done on how the tavern works in the official campaign...it'd be interesting to see someone build on that, too, and make the kind of tavern that someone could sit in and watch (some guy hitting on the women, the drunken brawl between NPC's, the two old men complaining, the merchant who gets pickpocketed, the mysterious figure in the corner, it's all good...)

Scripting: Skin color cannot be a tag that will be recognized by a script, no. If you set the SubRace field to Drow, however, that would be the easiest way to recognize someone as such.

If you're dealing with NPC Drow, making them a faction that your guards are hostile to is the easiest way to get them to fight. Otherwise, if it's PC Drow, you would have to script the reactions.

Not that it's difficult. You have an area script, right? If there's someone about with Drow as their SubRace, let's start spawning guards with scripts to attack someone with that SubRace and anyone defending them. Lots of stuff are possible, depending on how detailed you want to get.

Clothing: Yes... without any armor or clothing, the base model is stripped down to their skivvies.

There are several varieties of cloth 'armor'...which is really just clothing...for all body parts, allowing you to get a variety of combinations. If you like, you can have a clothing shop with as many different styles and colors of clothing as you can make.

As for LadyShayna's guess about detecting whether or not a weapon is sheathed, she's about on target. You can detect through scripting whether or not someone has something in their 'hand' inventory slot. Most people in towns do this...and if you've got something there, they ask you to put it away (as it's got to be either a torch or a weapon). They also detect whether you've got anything in the 'chest' slot...if you don't, they laugh at you for running around half-naked. If you do, you could do an equivalent check on their AC. High AC doesn't solely come through armor, though, so I'm not sure if that would be the best way. It would depend on what you were trying to do.

Clothing is treated the same as armor. You could have clothing that added +2 to your Armor rating...or whatever other properties you choose to assign to it.
For armor, however, the base AC is always determined by its type. You couldn't have non-magical clothing that added +8 to AC, for instance...it would have to have magical properties assigned to it to do so.

NPC Scripting:
1) Can an item or area be aware of the NPCs around it? For example, could I mark a certain area/item as a 'lair', and if it is empty spawn a few preparation type NPCs, like Goblin Scouts. If they live for X time then spawn some Goblin Workers, and if they live for Y time then spawn a whole colony with soldiers, chieftains, etc?

Yes. The script could go on an item or, more likely, into the area itself. Spawn in your goblin workers after a delay...and then have a script on the workers that spawns in the rest of your colony. The scripting language would be very flexible for this purpose...what I really like is using the die roller (like d100() for a roll of 1-100) and then using the Case commands to give a series of results...just like using random encounter charts right out of the books.

2) Are NPCs aware of each other, and can they use that awareness to trigger scripts? Every X days can I have a female deer check to see if a male deer is around, and if so spawn a baby deer?

Absolutely. You'd make sure that the female deer's OnPerceive script was active, and add in a script that if her OnPerceive was activated by a male deer, go ahead and spawn the baby (probably with a delay, no?).

3) If 2 is true, can NPCs count? If there are more than X deer in an area, no babies are spawned. If there are more than 6 Goblin Raiders, 4 of them take off to raid the nearby village.

There's no real difference, as far as the game is concerned, between PC's and NPC's. PC's are tagged as such, though. As far as the above question goes, absolutely. There are actually examples of such scripting in the official campaign, I believe.

4) Can an NPC modify its 'home' location? If a baby deer spawns as male, after X time growing can it be scripted to wander to a new area to start a new herd?

What it considers it's 'home' depends on how you script it. If you supply conditions that will make it move somewhere else, it will do so.

5) Can a trigger cause an NPC to change its type? After living for X time can a baby deer 'grow' into an adult deer and take on those new stats and graphics (if applicable)? Can randomness be added? Half chance of becoming a buck, half of becoming a doe?

I don't think you can have the NPC actively change its type (I'll have to check this to be sure). It might be easier, though, to have the baby NPC 'destroy' itself when the conditions are right and spawn in an adult NPC of your choice on the same spot.

6) Can NPCs spawn items, like a Goblin Miner spawning ore?

Yes. Whenever the scripted conditions are right, the CreateItemOnObject (using OBJECT_SELF if you want them to add items to their inventory) will do what you're asking.

7) Can NPCs pick up and put down items? So my Goblin Miner can take that ore back to camp and put it in a chest?

Yes.

Can an NPC check to see if an item is available (on the ground or in its treasure list) and if so change that item to another? So a Goblin Blacksmith can pick up that ore and turn it into an axe? Then a Goblin Peasant can pick that axe up and become a Goblin Axefighter (see 5 above)?

In a way. They could pick up the item, detect that the item is in their inventory, destroy it and replace it with another item. Similarly, your Goblin Peasant NPC could detect that he has an axe in his inventory and replace himself with a Goblin Axefighter.

9) Can an area/item set an NPC's waypoints on creation? Say I make a generic Goblin Chef template that has waypoints at an oven, a cupboard and a refuse dump. I have several lair areas that could spawn this NPC, each with their own ovens, cupboards, and refuse dumps, and I want him to be set to go to the oven/cupboard/dump in the area that he is spawned in, so I don't have to make a Goblin Chef for each area that there could be one.

Yes. You can name waypoints...and if the script calls for him to move to particular waypoints, all you have to do is make sure that the waypoints are named similarly in all your areas.

10) Can NPCs talk to each other? If two Guards are playing chess, when one says ?Ha, Checkmate!? I want the other to say ?You must have cheated!? and such. Would the PCs see this if they are close enough?

Yes, absolutely. We do this all the time in the official campaign, so you will have lots of examples. The PC can stand there and listen or he can move on and leave the NPC's chatting away. It's not dialogue that the PC is involved in, per se.

Script Length: A script can be quite long. If it's numerous pages, you might see a slowdown depending on the processing speed of your computer and how many scripts the computer is running at the same time...it really depends. There are tricks, however, to optimize the speed that even long scripts run at (usually by having the script run only the sections that it needs to...I'm not familiar with the process myself, though).

As for the other post before this, the one thing I will caution on vis a vis this 'civilization' is that if you are going to have objects being built via scripting, you have to have these placeable objects ready to spawn in. Otherwise the resources just don't exist for what you're suggesting.